by Chris Condon
How’s the weather today?
Perhaps, depending on the time of year and the place you live, you noticed something like this: Sun, rain, wind, clouds. High pressure system, storm front, heat wave, blizzard conditions, sleet, dense fog. But what’s “good” or “bad” weather? What’s too much of this, or not enough of that?
In my own case, I’ve noticed that while the weather is variable, my own state of mind is even more so. Ideally, I prefer partly cloudy skies, but my goodness, a sunny, crystal clear day after an intense storm is a delight to behold. If the storm is brief, I might wish for more rain. After all, I love hearing its soothing sound on the roof. But if I see the corner of our street has momentarily flooded, my friendly affect soon fades.
Perhaps the real nature of “good” or “bad” weather arises not in the weather itself, but in my own perceiving mind. There is that sudden moment where it begins spinning its reactive spell of “like/don’t like; want/don’t want.”
The artifice of the mind spinning its version of the weather, when I actually stop to notice it, recalls a passage that I read very long ago from CS Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. He wrote, “Everyone begins as a child by liking Weather. You learn the art of disliking it as you grow up. Haven’t you ever noticed it on a snowy day? The grown-ups are all going about with long faces, but look at the children – and the dogs? They know what snow’s made for.”
Of course, he’s writing about far more than the “Weather.”
Today, as I write this column, a powerful series of storms has begun moving into California. It’s been raining all day and, if the weather forecast holds true, it will do so for several days hence. Earlier this winter season, we had virtually no rain for weeks on end, only an icy-cold inversion layer that seemed to lock in endless days of dampness and fog. And tomorrow? Well…
The weather will change, but nevertheless, maybe I could imagine smiling and, in a fit of playful whimsey, opening the front door and just seeing… just feeling… Weather.
